The ‘lost decade’ in Japan was a period of steep surge in unemployment. It started in 1991 with the unemployment rate at 2.1%, and ended in 2002 when it reached a historical maximum of 5.5%. To assess the main causes of this rise we take a macroeconomic perspective and estimate a...

Offshoring has lately received wide attention. Its potential effects, mainly to be materialized in employment and productivity dislocations, are yet to be fully assessed. However, some consensus has been attained as to how to proxy its theoretical definition at an aggregate level. Here we review...

This paper estimates the possible effects of offshoring on Japanese employment. Both the positive and negative effects are here considered as a result of both the offshoring of production (or materials) and services. My main finding is that the net amount of jobs lost to offshoring during the...

In explaining economic phenomena, economic analysis concentrates on selected influences and fixes the host of other factors under a ceteris paribus clause. This view, which goes back to Alfred Marshall (1842-1924), is developed in the first part of the book. Aggregation is viewed as a particular...

Life annuities provide a guaranteed income for the remainder of the recipient’s lifetime, and therefore, annuitization presents an important option when choosing an adequate investment strategy for the retirement ages. While there are numerous research articles studying annuities from a...

Even 50 years after Modigliani/Miller’s irrelevance theorem, the basic question of how firms choose their capital structure remains unclear. This survey paper aims at summarizing and discussing corresponding recent developments in empirical capital structure research, which, in our view, are...

There has been a wide-spread misconception based on the imprecise wording of Art. 52 of the European Patent Convention (EPC) that the protection of business methods by patents is prohibited in Europe. This paper investigates the legal framework set by patent laws with respect to the...

Ein Großteil der Neugründungen in Deutschland ist auf staatliche Förderung von Existenzgründern zurückzuführen. Dieser Anteil hat sich nach Einführung des als „Ich-AG“ bekannten Existenzgründungszuschusses Anfang 2003 stark erhöht. Die Erfolgsfaktorenforschung hat diese Form von...

In 2003, Swiss Re introduced a mortality-based security designed to hedge excessive mortality changes for its life book of business. The concern was apparently brevity risk, i.e., the risk of premature death. The brevity risk due to a pandemic is similar to the property risk associated with...

The continuing trend of increasing frequency and severity of losses from natural and man-made-catastrophes during the last decades has drawn attention to catastrophe risk management. Considering the loss potential of catastrophic events, the private insurance markets' capacity does not seem to...